This cluster of hearts caught my eye in the Silhouette store, I was originally going to go with reds and pinks in the aperture but the 52 cards challenge helped to change my mind. I do enjoy more clean and simple designs at the moment and this is one of my favourites.

I could not throw away the die cut hearts from the middle so went with a simple cluster and embossed sentiment. Valentines Day will soon be upon us, I really need to make some more cards!

Monday, 20 January 2014

According to the song, it is more routine to bring tulips from Amsterdam, however on a recent trip there I brought back washi tape, lots and lots of washi tape.

I was late to catch on to washi tape craze and have a reasonable sized 'collection' already, however, I am always on the look out for more. My friend Nat over at Kool Kitty Musings told me about a retail homestore chain in the Netherlands called Hema. I began by stalking their website before I left for my trip and was quite excited with some of the selection shown;

So, when I eventually went to Amsterdam I found the nearest Hema store I could and went shopping! This is what I came back with :)

I couldn't help picking up some of the cute printed bags, great quality and patterns and so cheap!

I don't like to be a tease, so I have had a search on the Hema website and they deliver!

Wednesday, 15 January 2014

Every now and again I feel that I need to address the huge pile of scraps that I have in my drawer and last weekend I had that urge again.

This is the packet that I dug out of my drawer, along with some bright plain card stock scraps and a couple of small pieces of patterned paper.

I swear that octopus has been taunting me for months, now I have a new printer I can print out a punny sentiment and finally say goodbye to it. Unfortunately it didn't make the cut in this round, maybe next time, although I need to learn when to put something in the bin and move on.

I managed to make quite a few cards, although for this post I will focus on some birthday cards, that on reflection would be suitable for both a boy or a girl, finally, I need to build up my stock pile. All

I used the letters from another scraps project and popped up the stars on foam tape, I love the star washi tape, more on that in another post.

Again, my favourite foam tape, the small striped embellishment was a happy accident when I trimmed the paper.

I cut the frame with my silhouette using the rectangle tool and welded the word happy to the bottom of the frame, not an original idea I grant you, but I was pleased I managed to make it on my own ;)

I was left with these pieces and knew I could make just one more card.

I added a small glassine bag and used decorative scissors on the edge, filled it with some confetti and taped it to the card with some washi tape, a couple of stars, a ticket and a bit of stitching and it was done!

It feels so good to create more than one card at a time, I have another 4 cards to share from the same scraps bag, I'll be back with that on Thursday.

I then promptly forgot i made the first one and made this. I chose the paper first and tried to work from there, for some reason it doesn't work for me, it just feels like it's missing something. Well, whatever it is, at least I have 2 cards finished!

Friday, 3 January 2014

I managed to send a grand total of 5 Christmas cards in 2013, a shameful turnout for a card maker! This year I have decided to join in with 52 Christmas Crackers hosted by Nat over at her blog Kool Kitty Musings, it's a challenge to make a Christmas card a week following the prompts and by the time December comes around you will have a fantastic array to choose from.

This week's prompt is to use something new and it was the perfect excuse to break out my new Wplus9 Merry and Bright stamps and dies.

I'm in love with purple at the moment, especially rich dark purples like the Bazzill cardshoppe card stock I used on this card. I had fun die cutting 2 pieces of acetate and sandwiching them together to make the hurricane lantern, originally I had sprinkled a ton of stickles and glitter at the bottom of the jar to look like snow but it looked like a lump of frog spawn, ick! I cleaned them off and cut a snow drift from white glitter card and it looks much nicer.

I went with a more traditional colour scheme on this one, i really felt like it was lacking something so i added some washi tape to help balance it out, looking at it now i think i will also a couple of wraps of bakers twine at the bottom of the washi too.